PENNSYLVANIA THEATRE OF PERFORMING ARTS

by Greg Kerestan - August 01, 2024

The summer season ends with this kid-friendly spectacular....

by Greg Kerestan - July 22, 2024

Sometimes, smaller, dumber and cheaper is a compliment, not a put-down, as in this miniaturized Mel Brooks classic....

by Greg Kerestan - July 18, 2024

Irving Berlin's songs are both timeless, and also thoroughly of their own time and place....

by Greg Kerestan - July 14, 2024

José Pérez IV's new tragicomedy feels like it's always been around, but still remains refreshing and new....

by Greg Kerestan - July 11, 2024

I'll admit, I had a huge smile on my face all the way through The Music Man that had little to nothing to do with the production itself. You see, I'm a nerd and a theatre kid in my thirties, and to that demographic, there was a cultural phenomenon just as big as Monty Python and Star Trek were to Ge...

by Greg Kerestan - June 28, 2024

The funny thing about farce as a genre is it seems to be perpetually stuck in the past; the constant misunderstandings, cross-dressing and door-slamming seem tied to a time before the internet, before cell phones... hell, maybe even before the Pill. It's a Ken Ludwig world that seems tied to the Ken...

by Greg Kerestan - June 28, 2024

As a literature major, part of me has always found it unbelievable that tight, two-hour adaptations of Alice Walker's The Color Purple have been so successful. The novel is sprawling, complex and dense, with an epistolary structure not unlike the similarly tricky-to-adapt Dracula. Nonetheless, my st...

by Greg Kerestan - June 13, 2024

There is no greater musical theatre staging preservationist than Baayork Lee, who has devoted much of her career to preserving and restaging the original direction and choreography to A Chorus Line. ...

by Greg Kerestan - June 07, 2024

It's a tale as old as time: the downward spiral of a once-brilliant talent into substance abuse and early death. It's the second half of the 'star is born' template, and it never goes out of style... because it sadly never stops happening in real life. The list is long, with Amy Winehouse as the rec...

by Greg Kerestan - June 05, 2024

Folks, this is a first. I've been writing reviews for BWW for about ten years now, and rarely have I seen a new work that so deftly and fearlessly blends genres and tones together. Director Monteze Freeland and playwright Mark Clayton Southers have achieved the impossible: The Coffin Maker is an exe...